4 



able to make myself acquainted with them, will not 

 help any one here. Smith, who walks about the 

 market with his breeches pockets full of sound prin- 

 ciples as they are called, will then be no better oft* 

 than his neighbour Jones, who flings the said prin- 

 ciples overboard at once : and a few months later 

 or after supplies in stock have been worked off* 

 while Jones, if he has made good use of the interval, 

 to seek, or create by his own exertions, a new source 

 of supply, may possibly be floating buoyantly on the 

 surface, Smith will have sunk to the bottom, never 

 to rise again. And it is for the purpose of averting- 

 these calamities, which, when they befall us, no 

 Government aid, no human knowledge or skill 

 will suffice to ward off, that wise Nations avoid 

 being- dependent on any one foreign Country for 

 supplies necessary to the well being of any large 

 body of their people. It seems almost ludicrous to 

 be talking* " first principles/' at this hour of the day. 

 But, if people re ill preach, and will act, as if they 

 supposed the pharmacopoeia of Economic Science, 

 contained remedies for all the ills that trade is heir 

 to, and pertinaciously ignore the fact, that the mar- 

 kets of the commercial world are subject to per- 

 turbations altogether outside and beyond the control 

 of its Laws, there is no help for it. 



The Cotton Spinners were quite right when they 

 asserted that the Cotton Merchant should no more 

 grow his own cotton, than the Miller should grow 

 his own wheat. According to universal custom, a 



